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Friday, February 1, 2013

Kerry faces new battles as he takes foreign policy helm from Clinton

By Tom Curry, National Affairs Writer, NBC News

As
John Kerry prepares to take his place Friday in the long line of
leaders -- including Thomas Jefferson, Henry Kissinger and Hillary
Clinton -- who have served as secretary of state, he and President
Barack Obama will face some familiar overseas challenges from the past
four years:

Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions;

North Korea’s erratic nuclear-armed behavior;

China’s growing economic power and its potential leverage as a holder of U.S. Treasury bonds;

The horrific civil war in Syria which threatens to spill over into neighboring countries.

And there’s always the specter of a sudden, unexpected international crisis.
But there are also new and developing challenges for the
administration and for Kerry, who will be sworn in Friday afternoon,
such as the U.S. role in a country that few Americans have heard of or
could find on a map: Mali, in north central Africa.
There,
the Obama administration has broadened the post-Sept. 11 struggle
against jihadists by sharing intelligence with the French, as well as
providing them airlift and re-fueling support, to facilitate the French
military intervention against Islamists.
This military assistance
underscores again why the United States remains -- to use the well-worn
phrase Clinton used in a farewell speech Thursday -- the “indispensable
nation.”

On
Wednesday, John Kerry said farewell to his Senate home of 27 years, as
he prepares to take on a new role as Secretary of State. NBC's Brian
Williams reports.

When the U.S. or its allies seek to
intervene in a place such as Mali, only the United States has an
adequate fleet of C-17 cargo planes and KC-135 tanker aircraft to make
such an exercise of power possible; the French wouldn't be able to
conduct the Mali operation by themselves.
This week the Obama
administration also signed a "status of forces" accord with Mali’s
next-door neighbor, Niger, allowing U.S. troops to operate in that
country and suggesting a new chapter in U.S. engagement in Africa even
as Obama is moving to withdraw most U.S. forces from Afghanistan.
The
Mali operation is in part an outgrowth of the “lead from behind” U.S.
role in the NATO operation to topple Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
Professor
Michael Mandelbaum of the School of Advanced International Studies at
Johns Hopkins University and author of “The Frugal Superpower” said last
October, “In order to get the full benefits of tyrant removal, it may
be necessary to put American troops on the ground and that we’re not
going to do.”
But with Gadhafi removed from power, his weapons
depots were “liberated” and his arms proliferated all over North Africa,
including to jihadists in Mali and Algeria, where earlier this month a
group of militants attacked a natural gas plant, killing dozens of
hostages.
The Pentagon will be Chuck Hagel’s problem (upon
confirmation as defense secretary) not Kerry’s, but the new secretary of
state is especially worried that America’s role as military enforcer
has been hurting its standing in the eyes of other nations.
Kerry
told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in his confirmation hearing
that “American foreign policy is not defined by drones and deployments
alone. We cannot allow the extraordinary good we do to save and change
lives to be eclipsed entirely by the role we have had to play since
Sept. 11, a role that was thrust upon us.”
He also knows that the
traditional U.S. role as a preacher of open economies, free trade and
dependable sovereign credit is being undermined by its undisciplined
fiscal policy, threatening, he said last week, “my credibility as a
diplomat -- and our credibility as nation.”
Kerry’s role as a diplomat and international coalition builder will
be difficult for another reason. In the past, when there was a specific
threat, American leaders were able to form multinational coalitions to
defeat that enemy, as in 1990, when Saddam Hussein’s armies invaded
Kuwait.
But two new threats are more diffuse and can’t be attacked on a battlefield:

Demographic pressure in the developing world: A surging
younger generation in developing countries spurs conflict and unrest,
particularly in the Middle East where those citizens have played a large
role in the so-called “Arab Spring.” In his confirmation hearing, Kerry
noted that in his visits over the years to Syria, “President Assad said
to me, I have 500,000 kids who turn 18 every year, and I don't have a
place to put them; I don't have jobs for them.”

Climate change: How could Kerry persuade the Chinese to agree
to enforceable commitments to curb greenhouse gas emissions that might
cause disruption in an economy that demands job growth? All Kerry could
offer last week is a hope that he and the leaders in Beijing “can find a
better sense of the mutuality of our interests and the commonality of
goals” so that they could work towards an international accord on
greenhouse gas.